La Paz on Foot

Uyuni Salt Flats was amazing & I enjoyed the day spent on the flats. Accommodations at Hotel # 8 Jardines de Uyuni and Hotel # 10, Mallku Cueva Hotel, Villa Ma were not upto par.. The king size double bed was too large for the room that there was hardly any room left to move around the room or put the luggage resulting in having to put the luggage on the bed.

Other than that, the tour was well arranged & the guides were very professional & knowledgeable.

We organised a trip to Bolivia originally for 10 days and Camila responded very quickly and came up with an agenda.From our end it was all very last minute due to personal reasons so we were very happy with the quick and helpful responses from Camila as we refined our trip back to 9 days total.
Well what can we say. It was all amazing and difficult to pick out the highlights as our intent was to see as much as possible in our short time. This meant leaving out any viewing of the Amazon and northern areas other than a great trip to Lake Titicaca and the surrounds.We then had a few days in La Paz which were great. The altitude did affect us but not to the extent of spoiling our trip. The Inca Trail we walked I think should have been listed as moderate to difficult because of the uneven terrain.Once again we still managed it well but maybe a little slowly.
We have to say all our guides were attentive, professional and gave us their all. Orlando, William,Johnny and David and their respective drivers. a particular thumbs up for Paolino! our fantastic driver on the salt Flats.This guy really went the extra for us. If we've left anyone out it is not our intent. The staff that cared for us were all fantastic as was the programme drawn up by Camila. We travelled into Bolivia from San Pedro, Chile crossed the border which was a drawn out experience but then we were up and away. The accomodation was all very good. We guess the measure is " would we use this company agin or recommend it to family or friends. Most definitely YES! Micky and Robyn

Camila was very cooperative and actually was there to guide part of the tour.
I worked with her throughout the planning stages of the tour and everything went ok with a bit of input
from my part.
There was an incident that 10 of us was not picked up by the sub-suppler that was supposed to pick us up from the Europa hotel to the La Paz airport. Camila was there to answer my phone calls and texts at midnight. It turned out the sub had forgotten all about it. We took our own transportation by taxis to the airport. And Camila was quick to ask the management of Sendas Altas to make reimbursements of the taxi fares. And we received it within a few days of the incident.
Oxygen tanks were readily available in the vehicles, which helped our senior tour members who sometimes struggled with the lack of oxygen in such a high elevation sites.

overall camilla did a great job responding to our multiple requests. one negative comment. it would have been extremely helpful if camilla would have told us that a mask was required by latam before boarding to bolivia. i did not have one preventing me from boarding at that time causing my wife to open her suit case and frantically search for an extra. fortunately, she found one. then upon boarding, most were not wearing masks including aircraft personnel. getting into bolivia is a nightmare, a virtual bureaucratic morass. will not fly latam again if at all possible due to cancellations, poor substitute flights, baggage hassles and charges. altitude added to the difficulty of the trip since we were at altitudes ranging from 13,400' to around 9 to 10,000 including the atacama. food good in general. early morning flights, schedules, and departures were demanding and tiring.

la paz: a very chaotic city but not as much as india or some locations in s.e. asia. gustu: fabulous. mi chola, good, l'manq'a good. david, excellent guide, greg, good driver: cable car lines, valley of the moon, witches mkt. tiwanaku and lake titicaca- great experience. europa hotel was okay, not memorable. eating area was quite austere and uninviting. the breakfast buffet was okay.

sucre: dinner at nativa-b minus: service slow, silverware presentation, stemware, food presentation, quality, ambience and decor-ok, music track-ok. but drink pairing was inventive and good. far cry from the package at gustu.
guide: martha--very mediocre. her English was halting. when i asked her to translate the spanish on some of the museum descriptors, she could not do it. she tried to be helpful but as a guide she left a lot to be desired.
the tarabuco market was a waste of time except for the azur museum where we found a textile. not much happening for a market especially compared with those in Myanmar, india, s.e. asia. the dinasaur foot print sight was interesting. su merced hotel was a charming, iconic spanish property; room okay; food okay; helpful staff.

cayara: interesting diversion to this hacienda dating back to 1547. willy, our driver and guide, was outstanding-very knowledgeable and personable. rodrigo did a great job of explaining the hacienda's history through willy's translation. meals were quite good. overall, a good experience.

potosi: willy was great again as was johnny, the driver the mint was very interesting. willy did a great job of explaining the history.

salar de uyuni: probably the highlight of the trip. a very fascinating geographical formation on this planet. great overall experience with picnic, sunset, conquesa mummies. our guide, osvaldo, was pretty good but tended to speak rapidly so that we would have to ask him to repeat or just loose the thought. also he tended to rush a bit. did enjoy the laguna colorada, flamingoes, vicuna, llamas, laguna verde. palacio del sal was a unique hotel experience. the architecture was very impressive: use of salt blocks. however, i felt that most of the budget was spent on the exeterior and interior "wow" factor to the exclusion of convenient interior room details like a chair, a minimal desk; very cramped space; no window to the outside. meals were good. osvaldo said we did not have time to see the "stone tree". we did see the train cemetery as well as some interesting formations: "water fall canyon", "easter island-moai"-have to use some imagination since we had seen the real thing at rapa nui, lago canal, and a curious animal called a "viscotcha"-looks like a rabbit with a long tail that jumps like a kangaroo.

mallku cueva: okay for one night.

atacama: la casa de don tomas hotel--pretty good; due to early mornings, we really never had their breakfast, only boxes which were not that great. on our own we signed up for the celestial experience on the 14th which was to be in english. unfortunately it was in spanish. david ibanez was kind enough to give us the choice of going on the 14th in spanish with no charge or go the next day in english with a charge. due to tour times, we chose the 14th and it was okay. some english was used and we did use the 3 telescopes. great hot chocolate. everything worked out fine.

salar de atacama not nearly as impressive as salar de uyuni. but the lagoons of miscanti and miniques were spectacular. in the socaire area, rojas rock/lake had a vicious wind of about 40-50 mph; not enjoyable; only did half of the loop. unfortunately left my mountaineering wind jacket at the hotel. would have been great to have some weather advice before leaving the hotel. did see a very small group of flamingoes but nothing like the red lagoon. also did see some vicunas at the edge of the miniques lagoon.

we cancelled the tatio geysers at 3:30am due to the forecasted 15 deg temp and bad roads. after hearing others' experience, we made the right choice. these geysers pale in comparison to yellowstone. bottom line: not worth the extremely early morning, cold, rough road, long drive to see the steam.

valley of moon -very impressive formations; amazing salt formations.
valley of death partially closed. picnic at sunset with pisco sours was a nice touch.

all in all, the group tours were okay. left my jacket on the bus. fortunately the person at don tomas made contact at illari expedciones at 7pm. she got the jacket and was to be open until 7:30pm. i was given a map and raced over to find her closed. went to another shop; he knew her, called her. she sent over my jacket in a few minutes. all's well that ends well.

overall a good, exciting, somewhat fascinating but hard trip due to 11 flights, too many early mornings, altitude , rough, long drives, and the bureaucratic idiosyncrasies of bolivia.

Kimkim matched us with La Paz on Foot in Bolivia. We were well taken care of by La Paz on Foot every step of the way. We spent the first two nights in La Paz, then one in Island of the Sun, then one in Tuni, and then back to La Paz, then one night in Uyuni, and one in Villa Mar, then two nights in San Pedro Atacama. We had our own guide and/or driver who patiently explained much about the Bolivian history, current situation, natural history, and any random questions we had. We were grateful for the opportunity to have visited Bolivia.

Camila was fantastic! She set up everything for us from beginning to end. She asked us for the type of trip we wanted and set up all of our tours, hotels, and guides. When we arrived in Bolivia, we had our driver, Gonzalo, waiting for us. He stayed with us throughout our time in La Paz and was absolutely amazing! We also had an English speaking guide, Juan, who showed us Tiwanaku. Then our time in Uyuni was incredible. Omar and Alvaro were awesome! We spent 3 days exploring the salt flats and desert with them before returning to La Paz. I would 10/10 recommend Camila, KimKim, and all of the guides on this tour. It was executed to perfection and I can’t wait to do another country with KimKim!!